In search of orange

The groupings of photos above were brought together for a challenge proposed by two US-based artists, Jennifer Coyne Qudeen and Julie Booth. Every third Thursday of the month they are inviting others to post between one and five images focusing on a single color. Working their way through the spectrum, the challenge has been dubbed ROY B GIV (an acronym for red/orange/yellow/blue/green/indigo/violet). As an extra incentive, Jennifer & Julie are both offering prizes on their blogs; click the links from their names to have a look.

My original plan was to gather some of my favorite orange things from around the house—an enormous Italian-English dictionary, a raw silk pillow, a Florentine linen napkin from one of my grandmothers, a trio of favorite orange-spined books by architect/writer Witold Rybcznski, an orange woven tray, etc. But when I went back to look at Jennifer & Julie's photos for RED, I realized their shots featured subjects that seemed to be more spontaneous (as opposed to premeditated), so I rethought my original approach. Florence feels like an oven at the moment, so wandering around town in search of orange things hasn't been very appealing this week; instead, I took a trip down Nostalgia Lane (via iPhoto, the photo application where my images are organized). Some pictures feature Florence, others I shot in Venice, and those of the produce were taken at home.

Orange is actually my favorite color, though eggplant-y & plum-y shades of purple run a close second, as well as deeper shades of red/wine/burgundy. As my maternal grandmother always used to say, "We like dirty colors, don't we?", so many of my photos tend to lean more toward the terracotta/rusty side of orange. I've always wondered if the prevalence of terracotta roof tiles is one reason I feel so at home in Florence—they are everywhere you look, including the beautiful Cupola that towers above the rest of the city.

I had forgotten that the limit was supposed to be five photos (I ended up with four groups of four), but the important thing for me was simply the 'taking inspiration' part of the challenge. Because they were culled from photos shot without prejudice to color, those I chose include a variety of other colors that naturally fell within the frame, but I do love the impact of Jennifer's compositions in this post's photos, as they clearly pay tribute to RED. I will try to keep in mind 'YELLOW' over the next few weeks so that July's images might be a bit more deliberate (though I do have a collection of yellow-dominant photos already in mind...we'll see). In any case, as always, it has been fun to follow the process and see where it led.

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{If you'd like to participate in future—or even today—please see the guidelines here, which include leaving a link to your photos on Jennifer and/or Julie's blogs.}